ELCOT’s student laptop scheme

22072008

I don’t really know how many of you are aware of this piece of information, that is ELCOT (Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu Limited) is giving out laptops for students studying in Tamil Nadu. Students (of school, college or even Correspondence courses in Universities) can avail this offer. As per information from their portal, right now they offer Acer brand laptops that are preloaded with Suse Linux Enterprise Edition 10.1 (here Linux is making it’s way to student’s life), which comes in two editions, one is fully-loaded that costs 31,717.00 INR and other one costs 29,429.00 INR. I believe prices are inclusive of all other taxes. I have gone through the configurations, it is very impressive for the price tag, however I really don’t know how good is that model in performance vise. BTW, the offer ends on July 31st, and it seems they are planned to sell only 1,00,000 laptops. So if you guys are interested please make your way to get one for yourself. More details on http://www.elcot.in/StudentLaptop2008/index.php (also don’t forget to watch a crazy video posted out there). I would love to hear from you if you have any information on laptop’s performance. Please trackback.

In a startling turn of events, Elcot has called off its much-hyped tie-up with the channel community for supplying high configuration, low-cost laptops to the student community. Earlier this year, Elcot had expressed its desire to work with the channel. Last week Confed-ITA called an executive committee meeting to discuss the deal. Nine of the 14 associations of Confed had voted in favor of the tie-up. But now the corporation’s sudden decision comes as a surprise as it was the one who had initiated the partnership to ensure good reach for the scheme.

C Umashankar, MD, Elcot is said to have sent a mail to Confed-ITA conveying Elcots desire to withdraw from the deal. When contacted, S Karthikeyan, President, Confed-ITA confirmed the news. “I received a mail from the MD of Elcot, who expressed his inability to work with Confed-ITA in taking the student laptop scheme forward,” Karthikeyan informed. He added that the channel community understands Elcot’s decision. “We are happy to know from Umashankar’s mail that Elcot will extend all the necessary help in future to the channel community. He also showed regret for the situation,” said Karthikeyan.

Among the associations that stayed away from the deal were Madurai, Coimbatore, Tirunelveli, Tirupur and Vellore. Going a step forward, a few associations even banned Acer products in their regions, accusing the vendor for following dual trade strategy and demanded the same price as that offered to Elcot. However, the EC committee decided to go with the deal after a majority showed support for the deal.

The channel had hoped to capitalize on the deal, since the sales of laptops had come to a virtual standstill after Elcot announced plans to supply high configuration laptops for low-cost. The scenario took a turn for the worse when end-users started returning the laptops they had bought after seeing the advertisement from Elcot.

Meanwhile, Acer has approached the channel community and promised to bail them out of this problem. “Confed has received a promising call from Acer stating that it would bail the channel community out from the ongoing problems. We do understand from Umashankar’s mail that there was some technical error when Elcot had called for a tender for the laptops. We look forward to work with Elcot in future opportunities,” Karthikeyan said.

He also informed that there would be a meeting with Acer representatives this week for finding a solution to the ongoing problem. “We can’t expect our executive members to travel so much, as already everyone is exhausted due to the ongoing issues. We intend to meet with a few Confed executive members and major Acer partners during the meeting scheduled for July 21 in Coimbatore. We are waiting for a confirmation from Acer on the meeting and look forward to getting a solution for the benefit of the channel community,” Karthikeyan informed.